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Third of Japan's 18-year-old women may never have children: study
(www.japantimes.co.jp)
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this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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I'm not an economist so I will take your words on this, though I still struggle to believe it's an issue and have some remarks.
I am not worried about needing enought people for jobs. Given advances in inteligence automation then we can't forever have enough jobs for all humans. If a country can impliment a universal basic income then the citizens can at least have a basic living.
Why are most countries based on growth? That appears reckless. Unless we expand into space then at least population growth caps out at some point. Doesn't every other growth have a limit?
Ah, but you're viewing it as a normal human being and not a lizard man who only cares about making himself bigger.
Re your third point - this is one of the main critiques of Capitalism, the reckless disregard for the bounds of growth.
So in this case, the declining birth rates caused by capitalism might protect us from the reckless growth caused by capitalism. Sounds great.
Unfortunately, I think that capitalism is here to stay, so things will just get shittier and shittier for everyone. As others responding to the top level comment have mentioned, declining birth rates means more stress on the entire system, where we'll see more young people without any future to hope for since all their energy and money will be coopted for caring for old people, old people having shittier end-of-life experiences because there isn't enough money to support them, and countries will not able to support anyone because there's no investment due to lack of growth.
Your remarks are spot on. They are why I've read up on some of these problems over the years, even though I'm not an economist.
Automation very well might mitigate and/or cause other issues. It is to be seen if a capitalistic system will succeed in being reasonable, especially some of the more virulently capitalistic ones like the US. People being more productive has avoided many problems in capitalism for a long time, AI is a new way for this to happen.
Universal income is an excellent idea. There have been some really convincing studies where it has been implemented on small scales (one town or village). So far it hasn't gone much farther as there are strong contingents of people unreasonably against the idea.
Basing economy on growth is problematic. Growth being key to capitalism has been a criticism for awhile. It is reckless, doesn't reflect actual reality of resource limits of growth, and sets up problems some countries are facing (declining birthrate, job displacement due to automation, etc).
The fundamental issue with declining populations - fundamental as in regardless of the economic system of the country - is decreasing standard of living.
The very simple metric is productivity-adjusted hours worked per person. This invariably falls in cases where overall population is declining, because populations age as they decline, and older people work less (retirement) than younger ones.
As this metric falls, the country's economy basically just produces less stuff per-person than it did in the past. This makes everyone effectively poorer.
In extreme cases, there can also be issues with availability of services. E.g. healthcare: Each doctor/nurse/caregiver can only effectively attend to so many patients and this number is difficult to increase with technology.
How does producing less stuff make people poorer? Less people need less stuff, and there's more unoccupied houses?
I think the term is demographic inversion
Standard of living is supported by those who can produce versus those who cannot. As population declines the demographics skew to mostly be older non-working people. There is a certain point where the percentage of people working versus not working is too small, then the economy can no longer produce enough for everyone's current standard of living. It can range from relatively minor case of not being able to get all the variety of food, or it can be major where people starve because not enough food can be produced. Or medicine, or care, or electricity, or oil, or plastic, or TV shows, etc.
Given enough time a new equilibrium and standard of living comparable to the old one will likely result, but getting to that new standard of living can mean people died.
Would it have to be extreme where people are straving? A nation already wealthy has a lot of infrastructure which just needs to be maintained or adapted?